Notes and Editorial Reviews

Collectors who swear by their fine old 1950s mono LPs of the Beethoven symphonies made in the Concertgebouw under conductors like Erich Kleiber, Eugen Jochum, Eduard van Beinum or Pierre Monteux will find Sawallisch's new Concertgebouw recording of the First Symphony to be a great delight... [The] quicker movements are played with a clarity and zest that you will not find, for instance, in Harnoncourt's performance, where the first movement is played in a way that is oddly tired-sounding: mannered and circumspect. The EMI recording for Sawallisch is of a piece with the playing, electrically alive.

In the Eroica, Sawallisch does one or two old-fashioned things. There is no exposition repeat and there are some expressiveRead more slowings in the course of the exposition. What follows is, though, of a piece with this: a reading that has an irresistible and continuing sense of forward motion... Sawallisch's conducting of the Eroica's first movement is...of an order of interest that we can no longer take for granted in an age of metronome mania where the alternative is [a] kind of slithery pragmatism...

-- Gramophone [6/1995]

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[A] bright and flawless account of the First Symphony, which superbly points up the work’s infectious humour. In the Funeral March [of the Eroica] Sawallisch broods intensely... Sawallisch’s finale is masterly.

Customer Reviews

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